Amusement Park “Round Up”

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Chris Murray, of Tualatin High School in Tualatin, Oregon, recently sent us some great data taken with LabQuest and a Low-g Accelerometer on an amusement park ride, called Zero Gravity (also known as Round Up). As the ride began, a student held the accelerometer at chest level, pointed horizontally. When the motion started, two things happened: the axis of rotation tipped down and the angular speed increased.

There are so many more things you could investigate: How fast was the ride rotating at the maximum? How do you explain the shape of the graph? Why did they call the ride Zero Gravity?

Acceleration data with the accelerometer pointed away from the center of the ride